The invention is particularly applicable to interior hollow core doors and will be described with particular reference thereto. However, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the invention has broader applications and may also be adapted for use as an exterior door, tree house door, or other door applications. It will also be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the invention has broader applications such as for particularly applicability to solid core interior doors.
While screen doors have been made of solid core materials, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,250,040, none have used hollow core materials. Additionally, none of the screen doors have been designed to fit in a standard home interior 80 inch tall door frame designed to hold a 1&⅜ inch thick door and would require onsite alterations to properly fit and be properly secured in said standard interior doorways. Additionally, no interior door has been designed to accept an array of different inserts that allow the door to have a change in its function nor designed to accept a combination of different inserts to provide a change in the function of the door that differs from the front of the door to the rear of the door. Additionally, no interior door has been designed to be a standard door panel on one side and have the ability for an interchangeable insert to be installed on the other side.
Hollow core doors often consist of a core of lattice or honeycomb made of corrugated cardboard, or thin wooden slats. They can also be built with staggered wooden blocks. The external shell of the door is press-mold fabricated using compressed paper/wood bonded or hard plastic materials or other similar materials allowing for aesthetic designs such as panels. Hollow-core doors are commonly used as interior doors. Compared to solid core doors, they are lighter, cost less to manufacture, durable (scratch resistant) and easier to install.
Accordingly, it has been considered desirable to develop a new and improved hollow core door containing a screen opening (or other translucent inserts such as glass or acrylic glass as alternates) to be used in new construction or as a replacement for an existing interior door which would overcome the foregoing difficulties and others while providing better and more advantageous overall results. Additionally, it has been considered desirable to develop an interior door that has the ability to accept a number of different non-translucent inserts to allow the door to have different functionality without changing the base door.